In the last 10 years Ministry of Human Resources, Ministry of Finance and Bank Negara Malaysia have encouraged, promoted and supported the banks to lay off workers particularly those from the B40 and M40 under the disguise of restructuring/reorganising consequent to Industrial Revolution 4.0

Bank branches are being scaled down; fees imposed on customers seeking bank tellers’ services, customers are not given the option to choose the preferred mode of banking, instead targets are set on employees to compel customers to sign up for internet banking including migrant workers and banking transactions are aggressively automated.

All done under the disguise of technology and business but in reality, banks have done gross injustice to the B40 and M40 category workers. Banks emulate sophisticated strategies in exploiting workers, reducing their income and made victims of these ruthless exploiters.

Customers are not spared customers end up paying repetitive fees for core banking services. What used to be free banking services to the consumer is today, extreme fee-based banking service.

Despite repeated appeals by the Union thousands of workers were laid off stating with the approval of the Government agencies. Much to our dismay; these underhand tactics by the Banks have the blessings of the relevant Government agencies.

The immense contribution of bank workers towards the financial sector and socio-economic development of the country thus far should not be underestimated.

The misleading theory of technological reengineering and business development as the only way forward needs to be reviewed. It has been proven that technology is incapable of solving problems arising out of its own mysterious network of relations between things, consequently, sometimes solves one problem only to create another.

Accordingly, in order to prevent disruption of livelihood of Malaysians, we need humanize technological advancement to ensure jobs are preserved until and unless new ones can sustain livelihood.

Globally the banks are typical of corporate greed but Malaysia does not emulate everything from the West, so why this?

The government has recently assured that it will not scale down the civil servants although the size of it is claimed to have bloated by certain sections.

We welcome this revelation and in the very same token, the government must protect the private sector workers and assure bank workers fair opportunity for progress at workplace and be relevant to the society, instead of succumbing to whims and fancies of the corporate striving for greed at the expense of human values.